


Excuses

by aban_asaara



Series: Shadows at Noontide [6]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fledgling Friendship, Friendship, Heart-to-Heart, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pre-Romance, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 11:23:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11599635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: An exotic fruit from Tevinter is the perfect excuse to visit the handsome elf squatting in Hightown—but that’s not the only thing Hawke has been making excuses for.





	Excuses

“Is your buying people fruit based on their place of origin a regular occurrence? Don’t you have an expedition to fund?”

“Well, you’re the only Tevinter I’ve met and not killed, and the greengrocer was rather persuasive. ‘The only ones you can find in the Free Marches, serah,’” Hawke says in an imitation of the dwarven grocer’s drawl, “‘handpicked by elven maidens and shipped straight to Hightown from the lush stretches of Perineum—’”

Fenris has a weird little cough. “Perivantium.”

“— _that’s what I said_ —‘in crates enchanted with frost runes and pulled by free-range dracolisks.’ Oh, and it looks like it’s wearing a tiny court jester hat,” she adds, pointing to the strange flower that crowns the fruit as he pares it off before scoring the top. “Besides, I’ve never had anything from Tevinter and— _oh, sweet Andraste on a stick_ , of course the damned Tevinter fruit is _bleeding_.”

He glances up from the fruit he just crunched open to reveal insides glimmering crimson like a wound. “It’s a pomegranate, Hawke,” he says, as if that explained anything. “These are seeds. Have one.”

A few good smacks on the rind, and they come spilling into the chipped saucer they dug up from a caved-in cupboard. Hawke pinches one between two fingers and squints at it for a moment: it shines like a ruby in a slant of Hightown midday, dust motes swirling around it. There’s a burst of sweet tartness on her tongue when she pops it into her mouth, a taste of faraway Tevinter, but it’s gone just as soon, so she tries another one. And another one.

And then another one.

“It’s strange to eat one of these outside the Imperium,” Fenris says after helping himself to a couple of seeds. “There it was a treat, a reward for having been a good pet. I didn’t expect to still enjoy the taste.”

“Do you miss anything from there at all?” Hawke asks around a mouthful.

“No,” he answers after a moment. “Perhaps in time.”

He picks at the seeds one at a time, moving with controlled grace. He always moves like this, even in the midst of battle, felling Tal-Vashoth and spiders twice his size before they ever get the chance to close in upon her, picking heads and limbs clean off as if it were a dance rehearsed a thousand times. More than his prowess with a blade, though, it’s the sharp wit he wields that she likes, the snippets she overhears of his exchanges with Isabela and Varric, the glimpses of flesh and blood under the armour even as he tries to make himself out to be iron and steel.

He’s not what she would call agreeable—he’d probably dispense with civility altogether if he didn’t feel indebted to her and didn’t need the coin from the odd jobs that keep falling into her lap—but when they’re not talking in circles about the Circle, she likes him for all the things he knows, and his pragmatism, and the spark that hasn’t been snuffed out by his master despite everything.

 _The chains are broken, but are you truly free?_ said the Witch of the Wilds, and it’s silly to care when Fenris has given Hawke little reason to, but here she is, wondering whether he would’ve eaten anything today had she not showed with a pomegranate bought on impulse.

“Don’t you get lonely sometimes?” she blurts out.

“Yes,” he says, and she’s surprised he’d even admit it, “but at least now I’m alone. Even that was a luxury before.”

Hawke ponders his words for a moment. “So … does that mean I should stop calling at random, then? Because I may have been looking for excuses.” Now that they’ve tossed the corpses out of the foyer and scrubbed most of the fell residue off, she’s had to get creative.

His eyes flit up to hers from under full, dark lashes, then back down at the pomegranate seeds, and there’s something there she can’t quite name. When he speaks, the edges of his voice are just a little softer than she’s used to. “You don’t need excuses.”

“Oh, good, because those fancy Tevinter fruits are just stupidly expensive.” He lets out a chuckle, but he’s quiet afterwards. A truth for a truth, then, because she doesn’t know how else to tend to the fragile thing between them without ruining it: “I have the coin for the expedition,” she says under her breath. “I haven’t told anyone else.”

Fenris looks at her. If he thinks less of her for it, she can’t tell. “Having doubts?”

She nods once, like a child confessing to some prank. She’s been sitting on those fifty sovereigns for a fortnight now, tucked away under a loose floorboard because she doesn’t trust her uncle not to help himself to them otherwise. It’s more coin than she’s ever seen, much less owned, more than enough to move her mother and brother into a half-decent house in the less squalid part of Lowtown. Giving it all up to chase legends in the Deep Roads doesn’t sound half as appealing as it did at first. “My little sister was killed by an ogre when we escaped the Blight,” she explains, rolling a pomegranate seed between two fingers. The colour repels her all of a sudden.

“I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.”

“Thank you. After Lothering … let’s just say I’d be happy never to set eyes upon the Darkspawn again.”

“You know not to underestimate the danger, then. It’s your coin, however. You don’t owe the dwarves anything.”

Hawke shifts in her seat. “It’s—my mother I worry about. We didn’t have much in Lothering either, you know. We didn’t have a name that meant anything to anyone, or an estate, or anything of the sort, but she’s been miserable since we came here.” She sighs, then chews on a seed without enjoying it. “I think the worst part for her is that Kirkwall’s moved on without her. She’s not an Amell anymore, just a refugee. She thought she’d return to her childhood home and her brother, but instead she gets a hovel and a stranger who whored and gambled their family’s fortune away.”

“So you hope to restore her family name and fortune.”

She thinks of her mother weeping, cradling Bethany’s broken body. _How could you let her charge off like that?_ “It won’t make up for what she’s lost, but maybe it’ll make things a bit easier for her.”

His eyes weigh on her, while she stares down at the crazed porcelain of the saucer. “Perhaps not if it means risking her remaining children’s lives,” he offers at last.

Whatever she expected him to say, this wasn’t it. She narrows her eyes at him in mock suspicion. “You’re not just saying this in hopes that I end up in the Circle instead, right?”

He snorts. “I’m saying that you should do it for yourself, if you do. Not for the dwarf, not for your brother, not even for your mother. And allow me to say this as well: one day you will either tire of hiding or you will be found. You should want more than a lifetime of cowering away from the Templars, and you have that chance.”

She forces herself to smile past the guilt and the still-raw memory of Bethany’s death. “And here I was just thinking perhaps I could find myself some abandoned mansion to squat in.”

He breathes a laugh. “If you can stand the draughts and cobwebs, be my guest.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not stumble upon a bunch of Tevinter slave-hunters in my smalls one morning.”

“And that would be why I keep my armour on.”

He said it in jest, she knows, but she pictures him sleeping with his chestplate and gauntlets strapped on, the hilt of his greatsword within reach, and she feels a pinch under her breastbone at the thought that one day she might open his door to find the mansion abandoned again. They’ve had this conversation before, though, to no avail: the alienage is out of the question, the Hanged Man out of his price range, and Fenris wasn’t amused in the least when Hawke quipped that Isabela might let him stay in her room for free.

And then she sees her hubris for what it is: it could just as well be the Templars on _her_ doorstep, come to haul her off to the Circle. It’s the lot of an apostate, of course, a blurred shape hovering at the edge of her mind like the demons that beckon in her weaker moments—except she can’t will the Templars away. _We’re not in Lothering anymore_ , she realises, where they never took her for more than the pretty girl who’d bat her lashes while serving them their ale at Dane’s Refuge. What little protection Athenril can offer is already showing cracks, and through them she glimpses the fate that awaits her at the first misstep, smells the blood-like tang of red-steel plate and lyrium, sharp as a knife held by the wrong end.

 _Do it for yourself, if you do_. The words dust the doubts off her heart; buried under the weight of everyone else’s expectations, she finds again the home she wants to make for herself and the friends she doesn’t want to leave behind.

She looks at Fenris looking at her, his eyes the impossible hue of Lothering’s pastures after the rain. “Thank you for listening, Fenris. I just … needed to hear it, I suppose.”

He bows his head. “Of course. And if you want me there, you need but ask.”

Maker damn it, she’s starting to—like him. She can’t think of anyone she’d rather have with her on that blasted expedition. Who else could she ask, anyway? She doesn’t want to cause trouble with the City Guard by taking Aveline away for weeks. Isabela would come for the treasure, and she’s got her back like no one else in fights and tavern brawls, but Hawke fears that being stuck underground would make her restless, and reckless, and dangerous. Keeping Merrill out of sight of the sky and sun for so long just feels wrong. And Anders—well, having a Grey Warden along wouldn’t be a bad idea, but he’s made no secret of his loathing for the Order and the Deep Roads, and the fact that he only offered to come along in the wake of his lover’s death unsettled her, somehow. “You mean it? You would come, knowing what it entails?”

“I am no fool. I know the Deep Roads are dangerous.”

“That, and you’d be stuck in the bowels of the earth for weeks with,” she gasps and covers her mouth with one hand, “ _Carver_.”

“Don’t remind me,” he groans, and she has to laugh, “but should you make up your mind, I will come.”

“In this case, perhaps I could arrange for Bartrand to give you a share as well.”

She can practically hear her brother screaming all the way from Lowtown as she says it, but Fenris dismisses the offer with a wave of his hand. “No need, though I’m certain it would make for an entertaining sight were you to try. Riches will not deter Danarius, however.”

“And when the time comes, know that I’ll be more than happy to hold him while you punch,” she replies, though she resolves to bring up the shares to Varric when she next sees him. Then she pops one last pomegranate seed into her mouth before tilting the near-empty saucer towards Fenris. “In the meantime, any other Tevinter delicacies you’d like to reclaim?”

For once, the smile he gives her reaches all the way up to his eyes. It suits him. “I did say you don’t need excuses, didn’t I?” he says, helping himself to the last few seeds. “But if you insist: dates, and figs, and honeyed almonds.”


End file.
